


Home

by highflyerwings



Category: Backstreet Boys
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 14:38:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14717996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/highflyerwings/pseuds/highflyerwings
Summary: That first week in London was the hardest for Nick.





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a quiet moment during the summer of 2012, the first week in their shared house in London. I think I may have taken some liberties with the layout of the house, and where each of their rooms were situated, so my apologies to anyone who cares.

_“There’s something I know when I’m with you, that I forget when I’m away.” - **The New World** [Terrence Malick]_

____________________

Nick was stuck in the loft. There was no door. No air-conditioning. Just an open staircase, sending up artificially cooled drafts of air from the floors below him that stagnated and warmed the instant they hit the top of the stairs.  


It was the third night since moving into their shared house in London--the crew for the documentary long gone for the day--and Nick was wide awake. He breathed in the hot July air and willed himself to feel tired. To feel anything other than restless and uncomfortable. He laid in bed and stared at the ceiling until he stopped hearing movement from the floors below him. Until the house and its other occupants settled beneath him and he felt the air lighten a little in the stillness. He listened to his breaths. He counted them, and fell into the deep melancholy of night. Let it wash over him until he felt like he was floating. He thought about texting Lauren. He checked the time on his phone. 3:27 am, and he sat up.  
Nights, for Nick, were the hardest. There were times when the darkness threatened to take over. To drag him back to that place he fought so hard to escape not so long ago, and he wondered what he would do if one night he didn’t fight back.

He took another breath and swung his legs over the side of the bed. His feet connected with the wood floor and he thought it should feel colder. Instead it felt warm and dry against his bare feet, and he didn’t like it. He stood up and carefully made his way down the stairs. 

He walked through the kitchen. Through the living room, where the Xbox controllers were still strung out across the floor. Past the dining room, the office, the bathroom. 

When he reached the hallway, he stopped.

There were three doors stretched out before him. The looming darkness at the very end, Brian, in the master suite. Howie was on the left. AJ was around the corner, down a short flight of stairs. 

Kevin was the first door on the right.

Being alone hit Nick harder than he had anticipated. The need to touch as necessary to him as breathing, and he felt the lack of it; he felt the distance between his loft and the other guys' rooms, and it was too much. It was too much and it wasn't until he was standing outside Kevin's door that he knew what he needed.

He didn’t knock; just slowly pushed the door open and peeked his head in. Kevin’s bedroom was dark and still, and Nick had just enough forethought to softly whisper Kevin’s name to see if he was awake, but didn’t bother waiting for a response before he opened the door the rest of the way and moved to the edge of Kevin’s bed. 

Nick was never timid. He was always either careful or reckless, but whichever of the two he chose to be, he did it without hesitation. And tonight was no different. There was no hesitation when he reached for the comforter and gently lifted it to slip into bed next to his friend. There was no hesitation in the way he settled underneath the sheets, pressing himself against the length of Kevin’s back and wrapping an arm around his chest to pull him close. He pressed his nose against the back of Kevin’s neck and closed his eyes. 

It was only a few seconds before he heard Kevin’s voice break through the quiet around them. Felt his sleep-rough voice vibrate against his chest and down his arm.

“Hi,” Kevin said.

Nick always liked the way Kevin’s accent came through a little thicker when he was tired. Just the one word, “Hi,” heavy and rounded. Warm with sleep and the memory of Kentucky. Nick smiled.

“Hi,” he whispered back.

Kevin reached up and tugged on Nick’s hand, pulling Nick’s arm tighter around him and settling again, keeping Nick’s arm trapped underneath his against his chest.

Nick took a deep breath, and wondered how Kevin managed to smell the same over the years. A warm sharpness to him that Nick tried to breathe in as deep as he could. Deep enough that it might stay there. Might fill the dark spots inside him with something different.

He shifted a little in Kevin’s grip. Turning his hand just enough to press it flat against Kevin’s chest. He felt the heartbeat underneath his fingers, against his palm. He counted the beats. Tried to make his own match the rhythm, and thought Kevin’s was too strong for him. Too steady and sure. His own could never keep up. 

Nick wondered when he was able to wrap his arms around him like this. When the span of his own shoulders matched Kevin’s. He thought it must have been a while ago, and he was surprised by that. He forgot he grew up a while ago, and he wondered when Kevin noticed. 

He wondered how to get back to that time before. Before all this. Before growing up. Wondered if he wanted to get back. 

The past wrestled inside him. The current of it, pulling him between a longing to forget and the bone-deep fear that he will forget, and there wasn’t a moment where Nick didn’t feel tired from it. Battered and worn down. Exhausted.

Kevin leaving felt like losing a limb. When he left the group, everything moved differently. They over compensated for the loss, felt phantom pains where the fifth used to be. A dull ache that settled over them every once in a while when the weirdness of four just didn’t make sense. Nick could see it in the others’ eyes more often than not. A wild panic, like the jolt of your foot hitting the floor when you thought there was one more step at the bottom of the stairs. Too sudden and disorienting.

With Kevin’s return, the slow tingle of feeling worked its way back into nerves and muscles too long unused. And soon everything was righted again, shifted back into focus. And Nick was glad for it. Glad of Kevin’s return, and he needed Kevin to know that, because he didn’t think he’d said it.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Nick said. He tried to pour every ounce of the gratitude he felt into the way his fingertips pressed hard against Kevin’s chest. The way his lips grazed the back of Kevin’s neck when he said the words.

“Me too,” Kevin replied. And with that, Nick knew Kevin had fallen asleep again; his breathing turned heavy, and his body relaxed underneath Nick’s, sleep slowly returning to his muscles until Nick felt like they were both going to melt into the mattress. 

Nick sighed and slowed his breathing down to match Kevin’s. Taking long, deep breaths of that same overwhelming scent. Like shampoo, and fabric softener, and something so distinctly Kevin that made Nick feel like he was thirteen years old again, and he felt a wave of contentment wash over him. Sometimes he hated the way Kevin--the way they all--could still make him feel so young. But not tonight. Tonight he welcomed it. He welcomed the memories, and the aching release of something uncoiling inside him that he hadn’t realized he’d held onto so tightly over the past few years. Something that felt so much like home, he’d forgotten he missed it. 

The term “home” was always a foreign concept to Nick. He heard people say it when he was young, always with some kind of reverence in their voice that he never quite understood, and he thought it was just one of those things he’d understand when he was older. But it wasn’t too long after he met the other four that he realized this must be what everyone was talking about. After a while he understood what home meant, and soon he started hearing the soft reverence of it in his own voice when he used the word, and the revelation of the feeling it suddenly carried with it. Home was always the five of them together.

Nick took another deep breath and realized he was sleepy. For the first time since he arrived in London he felt truly sleepy, and he gave himself over to it.

***

Nick opened his eyes the next morning to soft sunlight coming through the window. The golden-pink hue of it falling through the curtains, tinting everything with a warmth that made Nick sigh. He turned his head and squinted at the clock on the nightstand, 9:15 am. He smelled bacon frying. He heard Brian laugh somewhere; he always thought Brian laughed too early in the morning, too bright and sharp for such an early hour. Nick rubbed the sleep from his eyes and slowly sat up. He was alone in bed. He stretched and yawned and pulled back the covers to drag his legs over the side and stand up. He felt old again. 

He slowly made his way back through the path he’d taken the night before. Back to the kitchen, where Brian was standing at the stove, tending to the bacon and eggs, and what looked like potatoes. Nick felt his stomach growl. Howie was sitting at the island, scrolling through something on his phone. Kevin looked up from where he was pouring himself--what Nick guessed was probably his second--cup of coffee, and said, “Mornin’ sleepyhead,” when he saw Nick standing in the doorway.

Nick smiled through another yawn and said, “Morning,” and he was quickly jostled to the side as AJ pushed his way into the room. 

Suddenly everything was in motion, an onslaught of movement and noise as they all moved around each other in the tiny kitchen; the clatter of silverware and plates, and AJ’s laugh cutting through whatever Brian just said, and Nick didn’t think three weeks was going to be enough time to get used to this, to get tired of it; the familiarity. Three weeks wasn’t nearly long enough.


End file.
